Health Care Reform for The Purse; Any Reform Left for the People?

“They seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payments,” the report said.”

This is what the Congressional Budget Office said in a report today on the Baucus Health Care bill that is still hanging in the picture.  This was said about that whole “co-op option” that was substituted for the initially proposed public option to be included in health care reform.

Which raises the question: so who exactly is this bill going to benefit in America?

The CBO has also said in the same report that this proposed bill will reduce the federal budget $81 Billion over a 10-year period.  This is admittedly good news.  It shows that the public option and the focus on this “government takeover” as some have critics have put it, indeed was not the only provisions that could reduce health care costs, and that an all-or-nothing decision on this factor alone would be foolish.  Even more important, the CBO reports that in 10 years, 29 million more should be insured by 2019.  The White House claims that 46 Million are uninsured currently.  Even if you don’t believe this number, and go with 36 million Americans + 10 million illegal immigrants, it still does not cover all.  And because of error, this could be an underestimation as well as an overestimation.  But I guess reform must start somewhere, and you cannot discount the steps toward the goal just because the ultimate plateau is not reached on the first step.

CAVEAT TIME…

Could more be insured by a more aggressive and competitive health cost reducer?  Like the public option?  I think so.  I interpret the comment quoted above to mean this particular inclusion would be all but ineffective at contributing to competition in the health care providing arena.  If capitalism teaches us anything, it teaches us that in a perfect market, competition is all that and a bag of lightly salted chips for consumers, because it then provides consumers choices, which increases fairness.  Now I know that the government would be an unfair competitor to other suppliers of health insurance, mainly because a public option would not need to compete for profits, but then this is also not a perfect market.  Health care has just become so bloated in its costs to individuals in America, that a very competitive option did not seem all too bad, in terms of benefiting consumers (individuals and businesses that have to buy into these health insurance plans).

Especially when the alternative is this “[co-op] unlikely to establish significant market presence.”  But like I said before, I will take a step in the right direction rather than stubbornly sitting on one’s hands. 

I end with a quote by Republican Mitch McConnell in response to the CBO report.

“The real bill will be written by Democrat leaders in a closed-to-the-public conference room somewhere in the Capitol. The real bill will be another 1,000-page, trillion-dollar experiment.”

This just indicates further that these next few days will still be filled with debate and mischaracterizations as politics and perceptions plagues the progress toward reform.  

Contributor, Young Writer’s Block
Contributor, The Carmon Report

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